Approximately 17,000 people in Hazel Dell and east Vancouver will find themselves in a new Clark County commissioner district next year.

The redistricting must be done every 10 years after the U.S. Census Bureau releases updated population figures, Tim Likness, the county’s elections supervisor, told commissioners on Wednesday.

District 3 will reach farther north into Hazel Dell and farther east in Vancouver so the populations of the three districts will be equal.

Likness and Kelly Sills, the county’s economic development director who worked on the redistricting project, presented commissioners with proposed maps on Wednesday.

The commissioners will vote on the changes at the end of February, Likness said.

Affected voters will be notified by mail.

The county has three commissioner districts. Commissioners serve four-year terms and run districtwide in the primary and countywide in the general election.

The current commissioners are Tom Mielke (District 1), Marc Boldt (District 2) and Steve Stuart (District 3).

Stuart was re-elected last year; Boldt and Mielke are up for re-election next year.

The boundary changes are part of the fallout from the new Census numbers, which has prompted Congressional and state legislative redistricting, as well as redrawing lines for port districts and some of the county’s 194 voter precincts.

A new state law requires that precincts have no more than 1,500 people, so the county will have to add at least a dozen precincts, Likness said.

After the county commissioner districts were rebalanced following the 2000 Census, each district consisted of approximately 115,000 people.

The population growth in the past decade in east Vancouver and north county boosted District 2 (Vancouver east of Interstate 205, Camas, Washougal and Hockinson) to 150,489 people. District 1 (Hazel Dell, Salmon Creek, Felida and north county) has an estimated 149,533 people. District 3 (Vancouver west of I-205) only grew to an estimated 125,341 people.

According to the proposal, 9,074 people who live north of Mill Plain Boulevard, east of Interstate 205, south of Northeast 18th Street and west of Northeast 164th Avenue would be moved into District 3.

Also coming into Stuart’s territory, under the proposal, would be 7,888 people who live in Hazel Dell, including those who live along a large swath of Highway 99.

After the rebalancing, the districts would have an average population of 141,788.

Clark County’s total population is 425,363.

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